


all i could see

by ilgaksu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1700s, Alternate Universe - 18th century, Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Pirates of the Caribbean Fusion, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9404951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: a series of in-progress AU concepts.





	1. Age of Pirating AU: Intro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which it's the Golden Age of Pirating. Captain Allura of the Castle of Lions is trying to take down the Galra Fleet, a mercenary force behind most of the various trading company and navy groups, as revenge for the wreck of the Altea when she was a child. Shiro is the first mate; orphan on Dejima, survivor of the wreck of the Kerberos, cursed to die after a day on dry land. Keith is second mate; a Korean orphan shipwrecked off the coast of Japan, he grows up on Dejima with Shiro, joins the Dutch navy, is cursed with a black spot, and is sent to Nassau to be executed after a failed mutiny, where Allura rescues him. Given his heart stopped before he was revived, the curse considers itself manifested and no longer affects him, which is where he gets the rumours of being 'a dead man walking.' Pidge is the youngest child of German nobility and ran away from home to chase rumours of their missing family. Hunk is Hawaiian and the most consistently underestimated member of the crew; taking over ostensibly as cook in place of Coran, Hunk grew up with his mother and an "aunt", and is travelling to make his fortune. Lance is a deeply superstitious son of a Nassau innkeeper and a pirate, and for eighteen years his mother's managed to keep him on land and away from this sea like his father.
> 
> I fell back into love with pirates after becoming beta for a Raven Cycle Age of Sail AU, [Nail your colours to the mast!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8219710/chapters/18838579)

 

It's going to be a long night. They're sat in the dark, their faces ochre and torchlit, the sea black glass. There's a ship coming by sometime just before dawn. They can't risk missing it, and they wouldn't sleep anyway. Keith's so keyed up with anticipation his teeth are nearly chattering, his hands on his whetstone-to-dagger routine until Lance leans over and forcibly takes the stone away.

Pidge sighs and flops over onto their back, staring up at the sky.

"I hate waiting," they say, petulantly.

"Welcome to what you signed up for," Shiro says, resigned and with feeling, and Pidge makes a gesture at him.

"I hate this," they continue. "How do you all do this?"

"We've had practice," Shiro replies evenly, and Pidge leans up to look at him incredulously, before sighing and dropping their head back to the deck with a thunk.

"Careful," Lance says. "That sounded hollow."

"Nice," Pidge says. "You can't read, Lance."

"I can!" Lance protests. "Church school!"

"Sorry," Pidge drawls, "Mea culpa. I forgot to say you can't read anything interesting."

".....okay," Shiro murmurs, "If we can save the fighting for when Sendak's ship passes -"

"I can read Spanish too," Lance bursts out. "I just have better things to do than sit alone all night reading. No wonder you've ruined your eyes."

"No wonder you've never married," Pidge retorts. "You know, you almost look good in this light. If only you'd stop talking."

"Lance," Shiro says, louder now and twice as weary, "Pidge. Stop."

"Is Hunk asleep?" Keith asks, and they all swing over to glare at him, the goddamn traitor.

"'M just resting my eyes," Hunk murmurs.

"Finally, a good idea," Lance says, and gets half-pillowed on Hunk's stomach before Keith grabs Lance's legs and bodily drags him back across the deck.

"Misery loves company," Pidge says, grinning, their teeth gleaming in the night.

"I'd like to throw myself overboard now," Keith says. "I'm already dead. You don't need me."

"Shiro," Lance asks, "I don't think second mates are allowed to abdicate from line of command."

"Actually," Hunk points out sleepily, "Keith's acting first mate. Allura's off the ship."

"I'm burying myself at sea," Keith decides, and gets halfway to standing before Lance and Pidge both drag him back down in eerie sync, clinging like mermaids to their prey.

"This reminds me of Nassau," Lance says.

"Everything reminds you of Nassau."

"We worked nights there," Lance says, and to be fair, he looks shockingly chipper, his eyes shining in the dark. "Hard to sleep when half the inn is singing and falling through the curtain."

"Falling through the -- what?"

"The curtain? At the top of the cellar stairs? It's yellow with blue, it's from France or somewhere and -- oh, forget it. I slept in the cellar," Lance shrugs, and then looks at them all. "What, you never wondered how we weren't drunk dry behind our backs?"

"Oh my god," Pidge says, "No wonder you're so weird. Your parents kept you in a cellar."

"I asked to be put in the cellar!" Lance hisses.

"Not helping, buddy."

Lance looks at Hunk, betrayed. Hunk shrugs helplessly.

"Imagine living like this forever, but with no shore leave!" Lance says defensively. "You'd offer to sleep underground, too!"

"When you say it like that," Keith murmurs.

"I'm resting my eyes again," Hunk announces. "Fuck, it's cold. I miss the islands."

"I'll keep you warm!" Lance offers, and tries to do the pillow thing again.

"I'll set something else on fire," Pidge offers.

"No," Shiro snaps. "No, you will not. Just -- I don't know --"

He casts a despairing look towards Keith. They've both spent more of their life at sea; land feels strange under their feet; they're used to waiting for something that might not arrive.

Keith says, "We used to tell stories on nights like these." He means both onboard and on Dejima, and Shiro's eyes soften at the memory.

"Matt used to sing," Shiro says, and Pidge sits up.

"He did?" they ask, and for that one aching moment in the firelight their face loses its bladed edges. They're so young, Keith thinks. They're the oldest they've ever been, and they think it makes them something more than a day over sixteen. Sometimes, they're so good at the act, they all forget.

"Yes," Shiro says softly. "He told me he was in a choir once. At university."

"He was friends with the Chapel Scholar," Pidge says.

"Did they sing in Latin?" Lance asks, and Pidge gives him a look, or at least, tries to, but it falls down. We all fall down sometimes.

"They sang in everything," they say quietly.

"Sing something," Hunk says, and when they  all turn to him, he looks surprisingly awake and a little awkward. "I mean. We should sing something. They're all stories anyway."

“Go ahead then,” Pidge says softly. “You start.”

 

*

The crew of the Castle of Lions are a legend alive; a bedtime story for bad children; a myth for just past midnight, when your mouth is liquor-limned and dawn feels like it may never rise again. They say Alfor’s girl-child hold courts aboard it. If it’s bad luck to have a woman aboard, surely the salt in her blood cancels it out; pirate royalty, her mother struck by lightning before her birth and her skin rippling with the marks like Poseidon’s blessing, survivor of the wreck of the _Altea_ , her father’s daughter to the bone. Cut Captain Allura, and she’ll surely bleed the sea back out.

The first mate’s a monster. They’re cursed, of course: all of them, but he’s something else, half-human with that arm, the one that binds him to the open water. They say if after a day on land, he’ll die of a broken heart. What a blood-price. The power seems hardly worth it; but they do say he can drown a man with a touch, though the man’s feet stay dry. They say a lot. They say he cut free from the English Navy, signed on at Dejima at sixteen; someone asked him once where he was from and he said _Kerberos_ , but there wasn’t a soul left alive on the razing of that vessel, so it’s likely him having a laugh at your expense. Not that he ever laughs when he says so.

Second mate’s no better though. Eyes like the devil himself. Can’t be surprised hardly, given the black spot on his left hand, left uncovered by his gloves. Can’t touch him without having it sear your own skin, so nobody does. Not that he ever partakes of touching, when they stop in Nassau for supplies. No one knows how he’s made it so long without the curse eating him alive; he caused a mutiny onboard the Dutch trading fleet; shouldn’t they have hung him and had done with it? Some stories say they did: some stories say his Captain brought him back to life with a kiss. There’s a reason they call him a dead man walking. There’s a reason he smiles so you can see every last one of the bones of his teeth.

The navigator’s a nightmare; too young by far, dressed up like they’re headed for a dinner party with those spectacles, like an heir to no man’s fortune. Sixteen winters, and you laugh, but they say the Castle uses the Bay of Mermaids as a regular route. You laugh, but they always make it back to Nassau, all the Galra-minted gold they can grab spilling out of their pockets in shivering reams. You laugh, but their eyes don’t look sixteen.  And that’s before they get to the cook: you’d think he’d be harmless enough, but that cutlass scar? That cleaver? The weight of his eyes? Witchcraft, that’s what’s coming out of that kitchen. Rooster sacrifices, prayers to the old gods, a ship that never sinks, a ship that makes safe passage through the Bay? Witchcraft.

Don’t say none of this in front of Rosanna - she’s a good Christian woman and won’t hear a word against them. She’ll throw you back out her door, and her rum’s like liquid gold, the slick of it as it slips down your throat. You won’t get sweeter on Nassau. Yeah, keep your mouth shut when Rosanna walks by the table. She’s sore about it, sore like a wounded bear. Can’t fault her for it, though it’s not her fault. You know her boy’s the last she has of his father. He went down with the _St. Susanna_ , God rest his soul, and her heavy with his child. It’s been near nineteen years, but mothers don’t forget their dead -

Oh, Christ Above, shut it, she’s heading this way. One more word on that cursed ship and I’ll have the first man’s throat out.

 

After all, her eldest boy’s only gone and fucking joined them all, hasn’t he?


	2. Age of Pirating AU: Keith and Lance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Lance having a religious tattoo comes from the history of piracy and sailing - sailors often had a tattoo of a religious symbol on their back in the hope that they wouldn't be flogged too badly, due to the Captain's fear of God. This is set after the intro and about two years before the next scene, in terms of timeline.

Keith, in a moment of bravery, reaches over for Lance's hand, realises halfway through what he's trying to do and near swallows his own heart where it's risen to his mouth. Keith keeps going anyway. He's nothing if not a boy who commits; he's a dead man walking, with an aching back slowly healing and a hollow of a chest that leaks tar, something easy to ignite, he's something easy to ignite, and he takes Lance's hand in his. If he wasn't half-leant over Lance, he isn't sure he'd notice the small intake of breath. As it is, he only feels it. He curls his fingers around Lance's, and pulls them up together, points at the sky and says, "There. That's it. That's your way home."

"Oh," Lance says, and he sounds relieved, he sounds like he's gathering up breath to say something else, there's a shiver in his chest that Keith feels rather than hears and Lance says, "What about - which star's for you?"

Keith drops their hands, brings his knees up to his chest, tells himself the scalding feeling along his skin doesn't originate from his chest, tells himself it's only his back that's aching and even that is healing.

"There's no star for me," Keith replies.

There's a long silence. Keith watches the stars and not Lance's face. Lance says, "You should take Nassau's, then."

"What?"

Lance shrugs, and turns to look at him, his eyes half-liquid, half of the sea, half endless with something moving below the stillness if you watch long enough. Keith wonders, not for the first time, how Lance's mother managed to tether him to the land for so long, when he looks like seawater's in the blue of his veins.

"Nassau's an island for the landless," Lance says, "And, you know, the godless. But mostly for the lost."

"I'm not lost," Keith snaps, and Lance rolls his eyes.

"Look," he says, "I'm just saying what my mama always used to say. If you'd spent more than a morning on Nassau conscious, you'd get it."

"I was being executed," Keith hisses, and Lance looks at him and says, "And you're still here. Can't carry through, can you?"

"What'd you do, anyway?" Lance says, leaning back against the mast. Settling in, Keith realises.

"There are better lullabies."

"And I can't sleep yet. Help me stay awake."

Keith looks at the curve of Lance's mouth and internally swears on every saint he's ever heard Lance call on, just out of spite, just for good measure. The fact he remembers any at all shows he's been listening, and that doesn't escape him. Keith has spent too long alone to not know himself.

"Raised a mutiny," Keith says curtly, and looks back up at the stars, the constant in the unravelling fabric of years, Dejima to Amsterdam to a last ship in the middle of the sea. "Captain had me in the brig four days till we passed another ship, and he paid for the next captain along to take care of me."

"What a fucking bastard."

"Yeah," Keith says, "That's Sendak for you."

"Oh, _shit_ ," Lance says softly.

"You ever been on a prisoner ship, Lance?" Keith asks. Lance shakes his head. "Good. Don't."

"I'm glad you're only half-dead, you know?" Lance says after a long silence, so long Keith had debated going back down the crow's nest and to his own bunk. His voice startles Keith, makes him drop one hand to the knife in his belt, always in his belt, even in sleep, and he turns towards Lance to say -- he's not sure what -- when what Lance has just said catches up with him.

He looks at Lance in the dark, Lance and his sunset skin and his dumb fucking eyes, and Keith drops his hand away from the knife.

"Thanks?" Keith says.

Lance nods, as though to himself, as though it's not something Keith was supposed to see. He leans forward, the telescope shifting where it's angled across his lap, and he puts his hand on the back of Keith's neck, the heat of it trapping the silk collar of Keith's jacket to his skin.

"Of course you started a mutiny," Lance says, shaking his head, voice low, "Of course you started a fucking war, of course you came back from the goddamn dead," and kisses him.

Keith clenches his fists at his sides for a second, his fingernails biting half-moons into his own skin, and he thinks _this isn't happening_ , but his back stings with each rapidly speeding beat of his heart, a counterpoint to Lance's careful mouth.

Lance pulls back, his eyelashes a faint shadow against his face, and opens his eyes. He shrugs at Keith, and Keith says, "What - what are you - this isn't," s _ome kind of joke, some kind of way to to keep you awake, this isn't what I meant when I climbed up to sit with you, this is exactly what I meant, this is everything I meant_ , "What do you even want to do with me?"

He makes it sound as threatening as he can, given the way his back is on fire and all the smoke is in his head, and he doesn't reach back for his knife, but it's close. Lance starts laughing, and he does drop his hand to the knife then. Keith is twenty two, and when Keith was sixteen he signed his first articles, and when Keith was sixteen and a half, he killed his first man, and when Keith was ten he heard someone say, "What are we going to do with that brat then," and when Keith was eighteen he broke a man's jaw for insulting him and he can do it again, he can, he can, it's just hands, he can, he _ can't - _

"What don't I want to do with you," Lance says, "Jesus God, don't make me say all my sins out loud," and Keith lets go of the knife.

There's a Virgin Mary crying on Lance's back, her halo bridging his shoulders in a circlet of stars, stars for the Queen of Heaven, stars for an intercession, stars to guide a Nassau boy home. Keith digs his fingernails in to give her something to cry about.


	3. Age of Pirating AU: Wedding Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Golden Age of Pirating AU again, based on Pirates of the Caribbean & the history of matelotage.

 

They're losing. 

 

There's blood on Keith's hands, a clear ringing pain through his shoulder that's slowly trickling down to a heartbeat, dirt under his nails, and they're losing. Keith has been to this place before. Here's a secret: Keith has thought _I am going to die_ more times than he'd been kissed before twenty. Here's a secret: once, Keith spat in the eyes of his executioner, and laughed through the first ten lashes, and chanted _I can't feel it, I can't feel it, I can't fucking feel it._ Here's a secret: Keith has been living on borrowed time for three years now. But here's another secret: some nights, Keith watches Lance breathe, the arc of his outflung arm and the slack of his jaw. Here's another: Keith knows the word for love in three languages, and he swallows around them in his throat every day. Here's one: Keith isn't stupid enough to think he could grow old, but he's stupid enough to want to. 

It's mathematics. Pirates don't retire. He signed his articles and knew what that meant; they're outnumbered, and he knows what that means; Lance can't die at sea, because he knows what that would mean, knows from the gold in his eyes when Lance's earrings hit the light and from the silver in Lance's smile when he says _Nassau._ Keith grabs the hair of the next man, and throws him over the side.

He kills another three men on the way to catch up with Lance, backed up against the rigging and baring his teeth. It's like a metaphor for something, that Keith sees Lance's eyes flare and they move around each other, Lance having abandoned his pistol for his sword and Keith gripping the handles of his daggers whilst blood runs over the hilt. It's like a metaphor for something, that together they cut five men down. It's like a metaphor for something, except for how Keith doesn't have time to decide what it means. That's all he wants, he realises, Lance's shoulders against his, Lance's breath caught in his ear, that's all he wants, laughable for a dead man walking: it's more _time._

"You still there?" Lance asks, trying for light and failing. He's tired, Keith can feel it in how he leans against Keith's shoulders a little heavier each time, each time someone else steps forward and they keep on coming.

Keith reaches for Lance's free hand and grabs it, holds it. _Hold fast._ Ink on your knuckles to save you from a storm. Ink on your knuckles to save you from drowning. Ink on your knuckles to say you from your own end.

"Trying to get rid of me?" Keith replies, and Lance laughs, but he sounds tired now. It ratchets up Keith's heartbeat but bad. Never mind the years of Keith trying to teach him in downtime, there's only so long Lance will last, away from the high ground and his gunpowder.

Lance has the faintest of powder burns on his hands and they are as familiar to Keith as his own name. Right now, Lance's hand is glued to his with blood and dirt, and Keith lets go to give Lance every chance he has, and listening to your better angels should make you feel less hollow, 'cause if it did, he'd maybe do it more.  _Why break the habit of a lifetime,_ Keith thinks bitterly, and suddenly understands the appeal of a deathbed conversion. The next Galra coughs blood into Keith's face as he drops. He ignores it, half his sense gone over his shoulder, to where he hears Lance hiss through his teeth. The orphanage in Dejima called Keith a wildcat, called him a heathen, called him something that could not be tamed, watched him warily above their foreign dictionaries like they were waiting for something in him to snap and they couldn't see when or how the tipping point would arrive.

The Dejima lot never had to worry. Keith's tipping point was four-and-twenty, a good sixteen years into the future, Keith's tipping point laughed in Spanish and had blood in his teeth when he turned his own head to look for Keith. Keith's tipping point was every fucking horror they'd ever feared he'd become, him a sullen atheist boy in their missionary midst, Keith's tipping point was how far he'd bend backwards for this boy, until his spine fucking broke and then, and then, and then -

"Lance," Keith decides, "Marry me," and for a second, Lance stills, and Keith thinks _don't_ , Keith thinks _die on your feet_ , Keith thinks _go home to Nassau and your mother_.

But Keith says, "Don't just fucking stand there," and doesn't bother translating the rest. Lance wipes sweat out of his eyes and says, "Until death do us part, huh?"

"How long have we got?" Keith asks, a little desperately, and Lance says, "How long do we need?" and Keith throws Lance out of the way of an oncoming sabre and says, "Shiro! How long do vows take?"

"About -" Shiro begins, and then looks over at them and goes, "No. No. Really? No."

"Allura isn't here," Lance says, "You're acting captain. Ship's articles -"

"Don't lecture me on ship's articles," Shiro growls, "I'm trying to keep our ship."

"What the everloving fuck does it look like we're doing?"

Keith's dagger swings past its mark and embeds itself in the mast. He tugs fruitlessly, ducks to avoid the oncoming blade. Lance shoves him out of the way, yanks the spare one out of the inside of Keith's jacket, and pushes it into his hand.

"Don't you dare give up on me," Shiro snarls, "Don't either of you dare, we're a crew, we _hold fast_ ," and Pidge says, "Shiro, not the time for a lecture," and Hunk says, "There's more coming from below the decks, and also, I'm seconding Pidge."

 

"Shit," Shiro says. Lance must feel Keith sag at the news, because he smirks at him. It's lopsided, but Keith'll take it.

 

"Last one on the floor's the winner," Lance says, and winks. "Shiro. How long?" 

"You didn't say yes yet," Keith protests, and Lance looks at him, in a way that's long and slow but only lasts for a second.

"Keith," he says. That's all. Keith takes one breath, then another.

He takes every last secret he's ever held in his lungs, from Dejima to Amsterdam to Nassau to this last living burial at sea, and he pushes it into his voice.

"Shiro," he shouts, "Shiro. _Please_."

Here's the last, loudest secret, a secret that isn't a secret at all: Keith thinks there's nothing after death but the sea, and Lance thinks there's an open door. Lance thinks there's something after the dark night of the soul, and he thinks Keith is going to be there with him, and Keith will be damned another time over if he doesn't let Lance have that. Shiro looks at Keith, startled, and it's almost like they're falling backwards through the years and the blood and the lash and the neverending sun, until Keith is a silent new orphan and Shiro is smiling at him from the other side of the dormitory.

"It can't wait, can it," he says, resigned.

"Can it ever," Keith replies.

_Blood brothers,_ Shiro had called them when Keith was ten. Shiro cuts someone down from the deck, and says, "It takes five minutes, if you take out the readings."

 

"I don't know," Keith says, almost laughing with it, sick on the sound of metal and the feeling of being above it somehow. "I don't know the Bible. You want readings, Lance?"

 

They're not going to win, but neither will Zarkon. He can burn their home till the sky goes black and he's not going to win because he can't stop this. This is something that can't be taken.

"You're all heathens," Lance says, "I hate you all, skip the readings already."

He's shaking. Keith can feel it through both their shirts, still pressed back to back. He guesses fear, exhaustion, trepidation from a boy who runs through the streets of Nassau without ever needing to look down. He wants to see Lance's face, but that's a fast way to die today. Keith just needs to keep them both standing for another five minutes. He can do that.

He reaches out blindly, and grabs Lance's wrist. Five minutes. Lance takes his hand. Keith aches.

"Anytime today, Shiro," Lance says, remarkably steady - which is to say, only mildly hysterical. "We're not gonna live forever."

 

Keith digs his heels in. Keeps standing. Holds fast.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler: they do survive, and Lance suddenly has a pirate husband to explain to his mother when they next dock in Nassau.


	4. Post-Revolutionary War AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very short scene based on a request for a 1700s American setting.

He finds Lance hiding in a room off of the main party. He’s thrown his jacket to the side and it’s half-crumpled onto the floor. He’s in shirtsleeves and without all the cobalt blue and embroidery, Keith has a sudden and vivid memory of Lance with powder burns on his face, bruises on his knuckles, Lance knelt next to him on the high ground and shivering in the snow. 

There’s a split-second, a hairline fracture of a second - before Lance hears the door creak and whirls around, half a smile already on his face - where Keith swears the bow of his head is familiar. But Lance looks up, sees Keith, and raises his eyebrows. 

“Shiro’s somewhere in the gardens,” Lance says, “I think Allura’s there. If anyone asks, she’s gone home and he’s somewhere else.” 

“I know the rules,” Keith says. The rules are unspoken. The rules go like this: Allura’s family are all dead, and it’s a tragedy. Shiro is tolerated by dint of being a war hero, and it’s hypocrisy. Allura is the sole heiress to a fortune but with an unfashionably English accent, never mind without her money the army might have starved. Shiro left half his own body on a battlefield and it wasn’t enough for some men. They only venerate you if you die for your country; there will be no statues of him this century; women don’t want a man who comes home in pieces if they can’t ever fix him back up. Shiro isn’t a fucking dinner plate someone dropped. 

Keith wants him to be happy.  

“Then why are you here?” Lance asks. The smile is gone again. It was clearly only for the benefit of strangers; now Keith is a known quantity, he clearly feels less inclined towards being charming. Keith prefers it somehow. Sometimes, when Lance smiles, it’s a shadow across his face, a veil he draws down. But Keith is known.  

Lance looks away from Keith’s gaze and looks at the wall. Last Keith saw of him, Lance was leaning over the gambling tables, throwing down his cards and baring his teeth, Nyma rolling her eyes and thrashing him into debtor’s court, probably. This version of him is muted somehow, even though all the candles in the room are ablaze. 

“Sometimes I hate them all,” Lance says lowly. When he looks up, Keith can see the fire that’s all around them concentrated in Lance’s eyes. 

It takes more thought to double back and lock the door than it does to kiss Lance, but Keith manages both. 

 


	5. Bonnie & Clyde AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, written on request from a friend: excerpt from an AU where Team Voltron are some kind of unholy Robin Hood/Bonnie & Clyde mashup in 1930s New York.

Keith opens his eyes to see Lance knotting his tie in the mirror, half-frowning in concentration. He's wearing Keith's waistcoat.

"You're wearing my waistcoat," he says, half - asleep.  Lance meets his eyes in the mirror, the blink of them sharp as a blade, and smirks.    


"You don't need it this morning," Lance says. "Be a pal."

He finishes his tie and shakes out the cuffs, fixing one cufflink in place with his teeth. Keith sits up in bed and pushes his hair back.

"Bet I can think of ways to keep you from God today," Keith says, grinning when Lance looks over at him and swears under his breath, cufflink falling out of his mouth.

"It's not God I'm worried about missing," Lance mutters, "It's my mother missing me."

"Why does she still bother with your whiny ass, Sanchez?" Keith goads absently, watching Lance swear his way through the clothes on the floor to his coat.

"She's like all good Christian women, babydoll," Lance tells him, his smile all teeth. "She loves a sinner."

He shrugs into his coat, leans across the bed to grab his watch off the bedside table. He's too tall for Keith's bedsit, near damn breaks his head on the doorway every time he ducks in with his hat and heart in his hands, and Keith lets him through the door every time. Sinner; a word for boys who should know better, a word for fools who make the same mistake over and over; a needle skipping on a scratched record, half an aorta of an aborted love song whilst Lance sings his parents' wedding song into Keith's hair with the curtains closed and safe.

Sinner; a word for the both of them.

Keith catches Lance's wrist.    


"Let me," he says, and buckles on Lance's grandfather's wristwatch onto his wrist. He does it gently, like it matters, because it does. Lance's skin is thinner, hidden here on the underside of his wrist. His pulse is rabbit - fast.

"You're a pretty son of a bitch," Lance murmurs, smiling slow and real. It trickles through Keith's chest like the good alcohol he can't afford and buys anyway. "I tell you that enough?"

"All the time," Keith deadpans. "You're a cheap date."

"You talk that way to all the boys?"

"Only the lucky ones."

"Yeah, all twenty of 'em, queuing round your block, burning to walk up all eight flights on their knees for you, right?"

"They're underneath the floorboards," Keith tells him. "Sweet, but couldn't stop running their mouths."

"Aw, baby," Lance says, grinning openly now, "Tell me you left space for me."

"Nah," Keith drawls, leaning up against him. "Gonna be doing what all those nice men in the White House keep saying. Sending you back where you came from."

"That right?" Lance says, curling his hand around the back of Keith's head.

"Uh huh," Keith replies, "There's a garbage chute out back," and Lance outright laughs against his mouth.

They kiss until the bells for Mass start pealing too loud to ignore, which could be minutes. It could be no time at all. It feels like no time at all; Lance calls on every last saint's dubious parentage when he hears them.

"If I have to sneak in the back again, I swear," Lance says, "My mama is already asking me if I'm going steady with someone. Keeps making noise about dinner with the family. Christ alive."

"Take him to dinner," Keith says, stretching his arms behind his head. Lance shoots him a black look.

"Stop doing that!" he hisses. "I've gotta go talk to the priest over the twins' First Communion, and I can't face him if you're heading up my confession."

"I thought they loved a sinner."

"Yeah, but you at least gotta pretend to feel bad about the sinning, Keith!"

"Don't forget your gun," Keith calls as Lance makes it to the door. He doubles back and stares around wildly. "Take mine if you're stuck."

"Since when are you letting me touch your things," Lance says suspiciously, eyes narrowing.  Keith tilts his head.

"You hear that? Since that."

The bells have stopped ringing. Lance swears again and grabs Keith's spare gun from the drawer.

"Catch you later, dollface!"

"Stop calling me that shit," Keith says, "I still have a gun under my damn pillow."

Lance cackles and slams the door so hard it rattles. Some of the plaster shivers down from the ceiling. Keith can hear the ricochet on the staircase as Lance hammers it down all eight flights.

He's still gonna be late, the dumbass. Keith isn't smiling. There's a telegram for Shiro about tonight's meeting. Keith goes to the record player, switches on the record Lance had brought over last night. Keith closes his eyes. He imagines a younger Lance watching his parents dance in their tenement kitchen over in the Quarter. He remembers how Lance had put it on with eyes that were ever so serious and held out his hand, and how they'd stayed stood together long after the song faded into static. He remembers how they'd both been shaking and how Lance's mouth against Keith's hair, singing under his breath, had made Keith want to stop running and lie down and rest, how it had made him want to floor it down the fire escape and high tail it out of New York City without ever looking back.

 

Keith catches sight of himself in a mirror. He reminds himself he's not meant to be smiling, steals Lance's side of the bed, and goes back to sleep.

 

*

Lance goes home on Sundays and helps out in the kitchen after Mass. He has to duck through the doorways, has done since sixteen, and every time his abuelita sees him she looks him up and down and says, "This is what comes of letting boys be born on kitchen floors, Maria."

"She always says it like I had a choice," his mother mutters in the kitchen, stirring boiling pots with a familiar annoyance. "We didn't have a choice, did we, sweetheart? You were early."

"Lance isn't ever early," Michael, named for the saint, sulks. "He's too busy for us now he's living with his friend."

Lance's eyes meet his mother's over Michael's head. She gives a little helpless shrug.

Lance puts down the chopping knife, crouches down, tilts Michael's head up so they're looking each other square in the eyes.

"I'm sorry," he says. "You're right. Do you wanna go to the picturehouse on Tuesday?"

Michael squeals and throws his arms around Lance's neck. 

"And where are you getting money for pictures," his mother says.

"I've got money."

"And you keep giving us half your damn wage. You'll never keep a wife at this rate -"

It's an old complaint. It slips out and it doesn't sting, but she lowers her eyes back to the stove.    


"I owe you nine months' rent, Mama."

"You'll be paying it back on Tuesday," she retorts, "They'll all be wanting to go." 

"So they'll all be going." 

She eyes him suspiciously. He sighs.

"Ask your sister to be going with you," she tells him shortly. This is a new thing she's been doing, wary he's going to take them all to the den of goddamn sin - or bring someone else out with him. That part still stings.  He kisses the side of her forehead.    


"Sure," he tells her, and keeps his voice light.

They lapse into silence. The wireless sings in the background, the sound of running feet, the noise of the newlyweds next door breaking their wedding dishes in another row. Lance reckons his father takes them all to church for a single blessed hour of silence.

"You're late to church these days."

"I'm working nights," he lies. She raises her eyebrows.

"You're a terrible liar, Lance. Take after your father. All of his lot have eyes like that."

"Like what?"

"Like what?"

"Honest."

She stirs the pot. Lance watches her.

"Whatever it is - this money, this - don't bring it home with you, sweetheart. Not if it's bad. I'll always love you, but not if it's bad, not with the twins so young still."

She doesn't look at him as she stirs, frowning into the stew's reflection like a mirror. She, all of a sudden, looks very small.

"I love you too," he says, swallowing hard. His hands move faster across the chopping board. They're singing a love song on the radio, and Lance knows how to dance to it, and sometimes he looks up to see Keith half-smiling through the dance hall smoke -

His mama thinks he's a runner for the everloving mob, Jesus Christ.

Lance cuts his thumb with the knife and hisses. Drops the knife. Puts the thumb to his mouth. Tastes blood. Tastes copper, tastes the ricochet and the road and Keith angry and intent in the driver’s seat.

"Lance," his mother asks, "are you seeing someone?"

It's a damn good thing he'd dropped the knife the first time, else he'd be missing half of his hand right now.

"What?" he chokes out, trembling the way you should after a bullet in the kneecaps and not a question from your own mother in the very room she gave birth to you in.

She pins him with her eyes. The children playing outside are suddenly very loud. She's never, ever asked that before. 

She shakes her head a little ruefully.

"Your father's eyes," she says, half-smiling.

"Yes," Lance replies. He's not talking about his father. She sees it. She takes it standing. Sighing, she walks over to him; his body is frozen and all he can think of is that time they were racing through the night and Keith nearly hit a fucking deer.

She raises herself onto her tiptoes, smelling like rose oil and his childhood, and kisses his forehead. It's a strain, but she manages it. He tilts his head down on automatic.

Kissing it better, he realises, with a detached kind of shock. She's kissing it better. He has to repress the sudden laughter in his throat, too loud and out of place.

"Go fix your hand, you stubborn brat," she says. "Bleeding all over my kitchen like it's your birthright."

Lance takes the excuse and flees outside onto the fire escape to get himself together. His hands are shaking. It's not the blood. The cut is only shallow.

He stays out there a whole five minutes, swallowing and blinking at the sky. By the time he goes back to the kitchen, it's like he dreamed the whole thing up.

"Does it hurt?" Michael asks, peering up at him. Lance flinches.

"What?"

"Your hand," Michael reminds him, frowning. Lance looks down a it a little distantly.

"Yeah. I guess. Sure."

*

Keith glances up from the mess of gutted gun parts on the table in his apartment when Lance opens the door. Keith can pull a gun apart and put it back together in less than a minute and it's one of the sexiest things Lance has ever seen outside of a Tijuana Bible, but his head is still echoing with the rest of this goddamn Sunday.

Keith's eyes widen.    


"Lance, are you -"    


"No," Lance says, "I'm not."    


Keith raises his eyebrows, but Lance looks at him, silently pleading. He sees the moment Keith caves.   


"Sure," Keith says doubtfully, "Okay, you're not."

"After all," Lance says, trying because that's his thing, "you told me I looked ugly that one time."

"I didn't!" Keith hisses. "You said crying made your skin go splotchy!"

"You didn't defend me!"

"To _ yourself _ ?"

Lance raises his eyebrows and sniffs. 

"I don't like it when you cry because it makes me feel shitty when you cry," Keith hisses, flushing. "Not because of your face! I don't know how to make you stop doing it!"    
Lance stares at him, something in his chest ballooning.    


"See!" Keith snaps, looking panicky, "Now you're crying again!"

Keith glares up from the table, gun oil darkening his hands, blinking moth - heavy lashes rapidly. Lance walks around the table and leans in, wraps his arms around Keith's shoulders and presses his face against Keith's hair.

"And now you're making fun of me."

"You're easy, babe," Lance says. He takes another few breaths.    


"You gonna hover there all night?" Keith mutters. "Take off your shoes."

"Maybe I am," Lance retorts. Keith's hand reaches up and clumsily pets his arm. Lance tries not to smile and fails.

"Okay," he says, leaning back after another minute, scrubbing his face with the back of his hand, slicking his hair back where it's fallen into his eyes. "Okay, I'm good."   


"Uh-huh?"   


"No, really. I'm grand. How's it been, babydoll?"

Keith throws him a deeply withering look.

"Peaceful."


End file.
